A NEW POLITICS OF GOVERNANCE OR AN OLD POLITICS OF CENTRAL–LOCAL RELATIONS? LABOUR'S REFORM OF SOCIAL HOUSING TENANCIES IN ENGLAND
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2011.02009.x |
| Published date | 01 March 2013 |
| Date | 01 March 2013 |
| Author | MARTIN LAFFIN |
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2011.02009.x
A NEW POLITICS OF GOVERNANCE OR AN OLD
POLITICS OF CENTRAL–LOCAL RELATIONS? LABOUR’S
REFORM OF SOCIAL HOUSING TENANCIES
IN ENGLAND
MARTIN LAFFIN
This article questions the orthoxody that government has been eclipsed by governance and
uses the reform of English social housing tenancies as a critical test of governance theory. The
preconditions for governance exist in social housing as its delivery has been largely removed
from local authorities and disaggregated into a multiplicity of non-profit housing associations.
Yet, contrary to the implications of governance theory, central policymakers have maintained their
ascendancy over central-local relations in the service delivery chain. Moreover, the political party,
rather than any policy network, was the key source of policy change and its role is crucial in
understanding how why and how the service delivery chain was reformed and the implications for
social housing tenants as a dependent social group.
INTRODUCTION
This article seeks to contribute to research both on governance as a policymaking trend
and on central–local relations during a period widely labelled as one of governance.
Although governance has become almost an orthodoxy, the actual extent of the shift from
government to governance remains debateable. There are still ‘too few detailed empirical
analyses of the extent to which it [governance] has or has not eclipsed government’
(Jordan et al. 2005, p. 477). Thus a pressing need exists for more research to specify
whether or how far governance arrangements have displaced direct government, under
what circumstances and with what consequences for those within public service delivery
chains.
This article takes a sceptical view of claims that ‘new’ governance arrangements have
replaced an ‘older’ politics of policymaking and of central–local relations. In particular,
it questions governance theorists’ claims that central government departments and, in
particular, the political parties have lost significance in policy formation and that the
influence over policy of non-governmental interest groups has correspondingly grown.
In the case study presented, the policymaking process did not resemble a pluralistic arena
within which networks of extra-governmental organizations competed for influence;
instead party-based actors played a key role and dominated the policymaking arena.
The critical test case selected is the reform of social housing tenancies (subsidized
rental tenancies) in England under the last Labour government (1997–2010). Social
housing provision offers a particularly promising test case for assessing the extent of a
governance shift and whether the consequent policymaking pattern resembles a policy
network or community as it displays the vital characteristics stressed by governance
theorists – the fragmentation of service delivery organizations, the rising importance
of non-governmental providers and a corresponding decline of local government as a
direct service provider, and a greater reliance on informal, horizontal network-based
coordination at the local level.
Martin Laffin is at Queen Mary University of London, School of Business and Management, London, UK.
Public Administration Vol. 91, No. 1, 2013 (195–210)
©2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA.
196 MARTIN LAFFIN
Governance and central–local relations: weak versus strong centre
‘Governance’ has acquired a wide range of meanings. Rhodes (1996, pp. 652–3) refers to
‘a new process of governing; or a changed condition of ordered rule; or the new method
by which society is governed’. Similarly Sorensen and Torfing (2007, p. 3) maintain that
‘the formulation and implementation of public policy increasingly takes place in and
through interactive forms of governance, involving a plurality of public, semi-public and
private actors’ and that ‘the state is increasingly ‘‘de-governmentalized’’ as it no longer
monopolizes the governing of the general well-being of the population’.
‘Governance’ will be defined here to refer to three aspects of how its advocates see
collective decision-making as changing: (1) the systems of policy delivery and formation
have grown more complex and multi-organizational with networks as the dominant
mode of coordination rather than hierarchies or bureaucracies; (2) within these systems
non-governmental actors, based in the public or non-profit sectors, have come to play a
major role not just in service delivery but in policy formation; and (3) central governments
are adopting indirect or ‘softer’ means of controlling or steering these actors and have
to persuade rather than direct (Bell et al. 2010). In this vein governance theorists argue
that governments are turning away from old ‘command-and-control’ policy instruments
in favour of ‘softer’ or indirect controls. These indirect controls are ‘assumed to allow
social actors more freedom to coordinate amongst themselves in pursuit of societal goals,
with far less (or even no) central government involvement’ (Jordan et al. 2005, p. 479). At
the same time central government agencies and departments define (or seek to define)
their role as ‘strategic’ and policy-focused rather than as direct service providers, while
the provision of services is delegated or devolved to other organizations either within or
outside the public sector.
In this article governance theory is tested out by distinguishing between ‘weak-centre’
and ‘strong-centre’ accounts of central–local relations. Although these two accounts have
been developed in the UK context, they are also clearly applicable to central–local relations
internationally. The ‘weak-centre’ or ‘hollow government’ account reflects governance the-
orists’ claim that central governments have lost capacity. Rhodes (2000, 2007) argues that:
(1) central governments are being ‘hollowed-out’ as they are losing the capacity to achieve
their own policy objectives to increasingly assertive networks of actors outside government
(plus to supranational bodies and regional devolution within countries). Thus: (2) policy
change has to be understood as both shaped by, and responding to, new conditions of
governance in which central and local governments are only one among many actors in
policy arenas dominated by powerful networks. The actors within these networks are self-
organizing and resist central government steering. Consequently, (3) policy outcomes are
not only the product of ‘post-parliamentary’ processes but are also largely shaped outside
central government within a pluralistic policy process. Moreover, (4) central departments
are ‘no longer the fulcrum of a [policy] network’ (Rhodes 2007, p. 1245) as these networks
outside government ‘resist government steering, develop their own policies and mould
their environments’ (Rhodes 2000, p. 61). As a consequence: ‘the state’s traditional power
bases seem to be losing much of their former strength, there has been a search for alter-
native strategies through which the state can articulate and pursue the collective interest
without necessarily relying on coercive instruments’ (Pierre 2000, p. 2).
The weak-centre account accepts the increased role of non-profit and private sectors
in service delivery but concurs with the critics of governance in contesting the claim
that a major or ‘paradigmatic’ shift has taken place. Governance theorists tend to over-
simply recent changes dichotomizing a ‘new governance’ versus an ‘old’ government
Public Administration Vol. 91, No. 1, 2013 (195–210)
©2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
To continue reading
Request your trial